This invention relates to apparatus and a method for distributing racks of cards to blackjack tables as those located in a gambling casino.
As one can ascertain, the gambling industry has expanded greatly in the United States. Presently, the large gambling centers of the United States such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City accommodate many casinos. A extremely popular game which is played in all the casinos is blackjack. As one can ascertain, the blackjack tables are normally located in common areas and there may be, for example, a plurality of tables in a common location, each one spaced apart from the other and normally arranged in a symmetrical pattern.
The game of blackjack is well known, and as presently played in the canino, a dealer will distribute cards from a rack or box which rack or box contains a plurality of decks.After a predetermined number of cards have been dealt based on a reference card which is randomly inserted into the stack of cards, the dealer has to reshuffle the cards, cut the cards and then again insert the cards back into rack. This takes time and, therefore, creates a delay. Furthermore, the same cards are employed at the same table during the course of the day. As one will ascertain, there have been considerable problems involving the game of blackjack where dealers have cooperated with coustomers and have used marked cards to enable certain customers to win large amounts of money. This is extremely difficult to avoid due to the fact that even though the cards are randomly distributed within the rack or card housing, the cards can be marked and since they remain at the same table, a player who knows the markings can take unfair advantage of the house.
Furthermore, as indicated above, when a dealer completes the run of cards in a rack, he must reshuffle the decks which is a time consuming task.
The present invention anticipates a solution to such problems and serves to eliminate the time required for shuffling cards and further serves to provide a method and apparatus whereby racks of cards are transported by a conveyer system which conveyer system is radomly controlled. In the system the conveyer carries a plurality of housings each of which has a door and each of which can carry a rack of cards. The motion of the conveyer is randomly controlled such that different housings will stop at each table during the conveying process to enable a dealer to remove an entire rack of cards from the table and to insert the rack into an appropriate conveyer housing which also contains a new rack of cards which will now be used by the dealer after completing his run.
Thus when a dealer completes the run of cards, all he has to do is place the completed rack of cards into the overhead housing as conveyed by the conveyer system and replace his unit with a new rack of cards. The conveyer system causes the housings to rotate from table to table at whatever speed is desired as will be explained.
Thus the above noted system substantially avoids the problem associated with marked cards and further eliminates and reduces the time required for the dealer to reshuffle and form a new rack as is presently done.